'Give anyone a pen and paper,' says astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell, 'and ask them to draw a scientist. You can bet a tenner they'll drawn an old white man with crazy hair, a moustache, a beard and a scraggly lab coat.'
He's probably right: I can see the image forming in my mind as we speak. Dartnell calls this the 'Einstein trope' and he believes it's harmful both for science and for society. But there is one group working hard, with the help of Dartnell and other scientists, to dispel this trope through a rather unexpected medium: theatre.
Since 2008, the stage company Curious Directive has produced no fewer than 17 shows - from Your Last Breath, which was critically acclaimed at the Edinburgh festival in 2011, to Pioneer, which has just opened there - with the aim of 'exploring life through the findings of science'. Your Last Breath looked at climate change and medical innovation; 2012's After the Rainfall drew parallels between human behaviour and the architecture of ant colonies; and is a multilayered thriller set in the not-too-distant future, concerning a fraught attempt to establish a human settlement on Mars.
Collaborations between artists and scientists are increasingly common, not least because as regular arts funding dwindles, the cash awards offered by institutions such as the Wellcome Trust and the Science & Technology Facilities Council are looking more attractive to artists. These collaborations also speak to the growing pressure on scientists to communicate their research to the public and, of course, to a genuine desire, on both sides, to share information and expertise.
But good intentions don't always lead to good art, or good science. What's remarkable about Curious Directive's work is that the company, led by artistic director Jack Lowe, submit themselves, in devising each production, to a research process not dissimilar to that of a scientist preparing a paper. 'It's a very long process,' Lowe explains, 'and the facts don't always support the story you want to tell. But my dad was a biology teacher and my mum trained as an actress; to me, exploring science through theatre has always felt natural.'
Dartnell's key research interest lies in the possibility of finding microbial life on the surface of Mars. He began working with Curious Directive last year, after Lowe approached him with an idea for a show inspired by Mars One, the first planned human mission to Mars. Dartnell often lectures on science to schools and festivals and had previously collaborated with a number of artists. But he was particularly impressed by Curious Directive's approach. 'They had a real hunger for finding out about the science,' he says. 'They didn't just say, 'I want to make a sculpture that looks like this; can you make up some science to kind of support it?' That can be a problem with some of these collaborations.'
During the company's work on After the Rainfall, Henry Ferguson-Gow, who was just finishing his PhD at University College London, met Lowe several times to discuss ant behaviour. He thinks working with artists who show a committed interest in science can prove useful to scientists, too. 'You spend so long looking at such tiny pieces of detail in such depth,' he says, 'that after a while you're like, 'This is so boring, I can't imagine anyone finds this interesting'. That show made me realise that not only am I doing something really interesting, but it's not only interesting to people who have a scientific mind.'
Then there's the fact that many of the characters in Curious Directive's shows are scientists and they are, for the most part, as far removed from that crazy-haired Einstein drawing as it possible to be. For Dartnell, that can only be a good thing. 'There always seems to be this slight barrier in society from scientists,' he says. 'One of the most important things to get across is that scientists are just normal people. And that's what Curious Directive's work does so well.'
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